Austin Kleon

TEDXPENNQUARTER NOTES + DRAWINGS

The great folks who organized TEDxPennQuarter out at The Newseum in Washington, D.C. not only had me out to give a talk of my own (which I’ll post soon), they asked if I’d take some visual notes for them as well. So I did my best — I missed a few speakers, since I had to get into makeup and prepare for my own talk.

I decided to revisit the sticky notes, like I did for TEDxAustin. Here I am showing them off onstage:

Austin Kleon at TEDxPennQuarter
photo by Flickr user Sexy Fitsum

D.C., by the way, was a total blast. Thanks to my friends for showing me around their awesome town.

A few more notes below–you can see the whole set on Flickr.

TEDxPennQuarter David Armano

TEDxPennQuarter Chris McDougall

TEDxPennQuarter Chris Bernard

TEDxPennQuarter Derek Brown

You can see the rest in the full set on Flickr.

WRITE SOMETHING GOOD

flowchart
see it bigger

This is an excerpt from my newsletter I sent out yesterday. You can subscribe to it here.

My TEDxPennQuarter talk is centered around a flowchart that compares my own publishing journey with what I was taught in college was the traditional route of becoming a published author. Looking at the chart, it strikes me that no matter what route you take, everything always comes back to the simplest beginning:

Write something good.

It’s easy to get caught up in the madness of the machine, and not get any time to do the thing you love. Brittany Forks said the same thing on her site recently:

The release of my book came and went. There was no big hurrah, no parties, no signings. As I am writing this, it is over a year after my book release, and finally I have climbed out of that depression and I am ready to start creating beautiful things again.

Summer is for recharging. Don’t despair. Read. (Here’s a list of books I recommend.) Take time to be bored. Enjoy the sunshine. Keep making things.

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